Gubernatorial candidate Jim Gibbons and wife Dawn leave a Thursday news conference in Las Vegas where he denied that he had assaulted or propositioned a woman after a night out with campaign donors. Photos by John Locher.
Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., speaks Thursday during a Las Vegas news conference with wife Dawn and lawyer Don Campbell. Jim Gibbons denied allegations of assaulting a woman.
Rep. Jim Gibbons had a brief news conference Thursday to deny allegations he assaulted a woman outside a restaurant Oct. 13, addressing the issue for the first time publicly but refusing to take questions.
"I wish to be very plain and very clear about these allegations: They are absolutely false," Gibbons, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, said in a law firm conference room jammed with television cameras. "I unequivocally deny that I ever engaged in any inappropriate or offensive behavior."
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Accompanied by his wife Dawn, Gibbons, 61, said he had tried to figure out why someone would make such allegations against him, but his lawyer, Don Campbell, had advised him not to speculate publicly.
A former fighter pilot, Gibbons said, "As a nearly 30-year member of our nation's military, I try to present myself as an officer and a gentleman, and my actions that night were consistent with that practice."
Chrissy Mazzeo, a 32-year-old cocktail waitress at Wynn Las Vegas, on Oct. 13 called 911 three times with the charge that Gibbons had grabbed her, shoved her against the wall and threatened her in a parking garage outside McCormick & Schmick's, a restaurant near Paradise and Flamingo roads.
Mazzeo and a friend had joined Gibbons and three others at a table in the bar area after dinner last Friday night. In her statement to police, Mazzeo alleged that in the booth Gibbons touched her leg, played footsie with her and made flirtatious comments.
On Saturday, Mazzeo told police she didn't want to pursue a complaint against Gibbons because "I just don't want to go up against something like that." Las Vegas police immediately closed the investigation.
Campbell, who also spoke at Thursday's news conference, presented affidavits from the three other women, including Mazzeo's dinner companion, who were in the crowded booth with Mazzeo, Gibbons and campaign adviser Sig Rogich.
They describe Gibbons as gentlemanly, not apparently intoxicated and not behaving improperly. However, they attest only to Gibbons' behavior inside the restaurant, not outside, where the incident occurred and where there were apparently no witnesses.
In her calls to 911, Mazzeo said she was sure surveillance cameras in the parking garage would back up her story. But police said the cameras weren't on that night.
On Thursday, Gibbons largely reiterated the statement he made to police on Saturday. He said he and Rogich planned to leave the restaurant after a dinner with donors that ended around 8 p.m., but both were on foot and it was pouring rain outside, so they went back in "to wait the storm out."
In a booth in the bar area, Gibbons and Rogich saw two women Gibbons identified as attorneys, although one appears to be a legal secretary. Both work at a law firm that shares office space with Rogich's company.
"Shortly thereafter, we were joined by two other ladies, one of whom knew one of the attorneys seated at our table," Gibbons said Thursday. "At no time, and I want to emphasize again, at no time did anything inappropriate take place at that table or any place thereafter."
Gibbons said he didn't leave the restaurant with Mazzeo.
"When the rain stopped, I got up, told everyone good night and left the restaurant with Sig, who walked with me outside," Gibbons said. Rogich went back in to pay the bill; Gibbons was about to walk to his hotel, the nearby Residence Inn by Marriott, when "one of the ladies who had asked to buy us a drink inside and who had been seated at the table saw me and explained that she was having trouble finding her car."
Gibbons offered to help her find it in the parking lot, but she said it wasn't there but in "a parking lot adjoining the Residence Inn, where I was staying. I told her I was walking that way anyway and she might as well walk with me.
"When we got to the parking lot where she indicated her vehicle was parked, she stumbled and nearly fell to the ground. I caught her when she did so, and I asked her if she was all right. She looked at me, said nothing, and simply walked away. I turned and proceeded to my hotel, and that's where I remained for the rest of the night," Gibbons said.
Gibbons said he was "floored" when police contacted him the next day.
"While the stakes of this campaign are high, my good name is more important than any elected office," Gibbons said. "As I have always done and will continue to do, in the remaining days of this campaign, I put my trust and confidence in the voters of this great state."
Campbell said Mazzeo's statements in the 911 recordings and police interviews shouldn't be taken at face value.
"I pose the following simple rhetorical question: Would any of you, any of you, rely on such incoherent, inconsistent allegations if they had been made about your husband, or your father, or your grandfather? I respectfully suggest that none of you would do so," Campbell said.
Campbell said he could "scarcely envision any public official less inclined to engage in the sort of inappropriate conduct that has been alleged by Ms. Mazzeo of Mr. Gibbons."
Campbell read from the affidavits signed by Mazzeo's friend, Pennie Puhek; Georganne Bradley, a lawyer at Bullivant Houser Bailey, the firm next to Rogich's office; and Michelle Diegel, who works at the firm. Campbell then ended the news conference and hustled Gibbons out of the room.
The best damage control for Gibbons would have been to appear to have nothing to hide, and preferably to have done it several days ago, said David Damore, a political scientist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. But by not taking any questions, Gibbons failed to resolve the many lingering uncertainties that surround the alleged incident, he said.
"There are still inconsistencies that are not accounted for," he said. "If you can't talk about it, why have a press conference?"
Among the unresolved questions, Damore said, the first that comes to mind is why Gibbons was helping to her car a woman he told police he believed to be drunk.
There's also the issue of an apparent lapse in time, he said: Mazzeo told police she and Puhek stayed inside for 15 to 20 minutes after Rogich, Gibbons, Bradley and Diegel left. A waitress told police Mazzeo and Puhek stayed behind for about half an hour. But Gibbons was still in the parking lot when Mazzeo walked out, according to his own account.
"These kinds of questions will keep the story alive," Damore said.
The "million dollar question," Damore said, is why Mazzeo would make and insist on such a claim, consistently throughout three calls to police and a lengthy interview, if it weren't true. Despite reportedly having hired a lawyer, Mazzeo has declined to speak publicly about the events of last Friday.
What effect, if any, the furor will have on Gibbons' fate in the Nov. 7 election was unclear.
More than a dozen voters interviewed in Las Vegas on Thursday, both Democrats and Republicans, expressed skepticism about the allegations and said they wouldn't at this point affect their vote for governor.
Review-Journal writer David Kihara contributed to this report.
